Dr. Kevin D. Roberts’ Address to the Class of 2025

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“Illusion or Illumination” 

 

by Kevin D. Roberts, Ph.D.
President
The Heritage Foundation & Heritage Action for America
Commencement 2025
Thomas Aquinas College, New England

 

What an honor to be here. A true honor. And it’s a real honor to be introduced by a friend of many years, someone who is a remarkable leader. Please join me in giving a warm, rousing round of applause for President Paul O’Reilly.

And, for the record, I wouldn’t do that for just any plain, old Irishman. Paul O’Reilly is very special. I want to thank, too, the faculty and staff of Thomas Aquinas College, New England. And I also want to thank Fr. Markey, Fr. Murray, all of the clergy, choir, acolytes for one of the most beautiful Masses ever, certainly one of the most beautiful Baccalaureate Masses I’ve ever attended. How about a round of applause for their service?

To the Class of 2025, as your brother in faith, who has led not just any sister institution — but you might say the sister institution of Thomas Aquinas College — I have long admired your noble institution. I have long admired the College’s work, now on both coasts of the American Republic, and I look forward in the coming years and decades to admiring your work. Thank you to the parents, grandparents, godparents, friends, all of you out in the audience who have made their success thus far possible.

“God has given you an incredible opportunity, and I know that you are grateful for it. But remember that this school has certainly given you an excellent education, an excellent formation, and, therefore, the only question now is, ‘What do you do with it?’”

Let me be really blunt up front. What your generation does — what you choose to do, starting when you walk out of this building — will determine the course of the American Republic and the Catholic Church in this country and beyond. And I also want to be really blunt: I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future of both. God bless you for what you have already done!

I’m sorry to add so much pressure at the very beginning.

In a matter of minutes — a matter of minutes — your time as a student at Thomas Aquinas College will come to an end. Do me a favor and don’t start weeping, because I have a hard time getting through graduations as it is. They are joyous occasions, and it’s good to exhibit joyous tears.

Your relationships with each other — in spite of the fact that life changes when you exit those doors soon — will not. You’re sitting with men and women who will be in your wedding party. You might even be sitting with your spouse. Maybe some of you know that, and I don’t — I know how these colleges work, remember. When our daughter, for example, went off to the University of Dallas, from which she graduated last May, she made the joke, as I was driving her up there, that she was not going to the University of Dallas to find a husband, but lo and behold, she did! This is a good thing.

The point is, and you get it, among your classmates are friends you will treasure for the rest of your lives. The same goes for your former tutors, who are now your future friends, you future mentors, your future life coaches. As an old professor myself, I know how much it means to hear from my students. I hear from them every week; even as I was walking in I ran into a former student from many years ago. So, stay in touch with them. Make that phone call; even if it has to be an email or a text message, send it. Especially a few months from now, after your first summer of entry-level work has you suddenly discerning that you, too, are being called to be … a professional academic. (I say that as one!)

No one will give you more thoughtful, honest, or illusion-shattering advice. Take it.

So, thank you. Not only for hosting me, which really is an honor, but most of all for the heroic lives of work, witness, and service you are about to embark on. And, since I am, in fact, an old history professor, let me say: What an incredible place to be embarking from!

Northfield, Massachusetts, is not just another beautiful, quaint, quiet New England town, where visitors like me come to take a look at the fall foliage. Throughout its history, Northfield has been a colonial outpost — a garrison for civilization — and a stronghold for Christianity.

In the 1670s, when this town was founded, it was one of the most remote settlements of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During its first decades, it was abandoned and resettled multiple times because of violent conflicts with the French and American Indians.

In April 1775, 250 years ago last month, dozens of men from Northfield — some of them younger even than you — responded to the Lexington Alarm, the call to arms after the first shots of the American Revolution rang out just 75 miles from here.

And in the 1880s, as you know, Northfield once again found itself at the center of a different kind of revolution. Dwight L. Moody, one of the most influential evangelists of the 19^th century and a central figure in America’s third great awakening, was born right here. For the past four years, you have all studied the best of what has been taught, and said, and thought on the grounds where Moody’s school, the Northfield Mount Hermon School, was founded.

Today, I hope you remember his words, “faith makes all things possible … love makes all things easy.” And, in the coming years, I hope that you will put his missionary zeal and his home’s pioneer spirit in service of Mother Church and work to evangelize the whole world for Jesus Christ.

I remind you of this legacy because Northfield’s history is your inheritance. Today, it is your turn to carry the flame of the West.

And on this sometimes-beautiful spring day, in the middle of Eastertide, during a year of Jubilee, right here in historic Northfield, Massachusetts … we stand at the dawn of what I believe will be an era of cultural resurrection for the Catholic Church in the United States, across the West, and around the world.

As a conservative think-tank president working in Washington, I’m not prone to unrealistic optimism. But like the apostle Thomas, I can’t deny what is plain to see.

Reports of record numbers of conversions here and vocations there. Pews filling, even in the United Kingdom, especially in traditional churches — to the incredulity of the corporate media. The ongoing self-discrediting of the secular, globalist post-Christian elite around the world. A whip-smart Catholic convert sworn in as the vice president of the United States. A new Holy Father installed in Rome, as Mr. da Silva observed, and an American named Leo XIV! How about a round of applause for that? He deserves it. You deserve it.

But something is afoot in this great republic. Thirteen months and a few days from now, we’ll celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the birth of the greatest experiment in civil society in the history of the world. And you, my new friends, get to be at the center of resurrecting it, of revitalizing it, with all of these green shoots in almost every arena of public life.

The world certainly remains fallen, as it always has been. But I am here to tell you, there has never been a more exciting time to be a young Catholic in the United States than right now. And to keep in mind, you aren’t just a young Catholic in the United States, you are armed with an education and formation from Thomas Aquinas College.

So back to my earlier comment, I’m sorry for the pressure. God has given you an incredible opportunity, and I know that you are grateful for it. Remember that this school has certainly given you an excellent education, an excellent formation, and, therefore, the only question now is, “What do you do with it?”

What do you do with it?

The way I see it, there are only two ways to answer this question. And no, I’m not referring to the choice between married life and religious life — a very important decision, to be clear — both of them, obviously, noble vocations. I’m confident you will decide appropriately with the formation that you have with your own very rich spiritual lives (and know of my prayers).

“In my experience, it’s very often the first half — the admonition to ‘be in the world’ — that smart, young, liberally educated Catholics from excellent colleges like yours really need to hear.”

I’m also not talking about what you will do for work. Let’s be honest, too many of you will become professors. (The tutors were already a little skeptical of me. Now they really are! There’s a lot of self-criticism in that comment, too, remember.) Others will go into business. The best of you might even come to work on an unknown presidential transition project at a little think tank in Washington, D.C.

God willing, every single one of you will become a saint.

The choice I’m talking about is one you will have to make no matter where you go, whom you marry, what your vocation is, what you do for a living. It’s a choice about how you will use your education and live out your faith.

So, what are the options?

The first option — which far too many well-educated Catholics are choosing today — is to lock themselves in the Ivory Tower and wash their hands of the modern world. They argue that the modern world is full of temptations. And, Lord knows, it is. They see heresy and corruption around every corner. And heresy and corruption do run rampant. (Remember, I work in Washington.)

But their response, which is well intentioned, is to walk away from the world and hoard their inheritance, our inheritance, for themselves — and to do so is to live in an illusion. A false sense of safety. The work of a prideful intellect that has forgotten Pope Benedict XVI’s words: “You were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness.”

These Catholics think they are like Medieval monks, tending the flames of our patrimony. But I think they’re more like the Jews who said, “nothing good can come from Nazareth” — so stuck in their manuscripts and so prideful in their own legalism that they can’t see God’s plan unfolding right in front of them.

So that brings me to the second option. To become — to continue, because I know you are — a true disciple of Jesus Christ and put your education in service to the Great Commission.

This is what a genuine liberal education that teaches us to love the good, the true, and the beautiful is really for. Not to simply know that the modern world is broken. But to love God so much that you’re going to spend every day trying to fix it, trying to repair it, in good cheer.

To restore Christian culture, we must be, as you know, “in the world, but not of it.”

Now, usually, when Christians employ this maxim, it’s to emphasize the second half, and with good reason. To avoid the temptations of the flesh. But, in my experience, it’s very often the first half — the admonition to “be in the world” — that smart, young, liberally educated Catholics from excellent colleges like yours really need to hear.

Put simply, the world is not going to repair itself. Neither can it be repaired from safe remove. For Christians, retreat is surrender — especially if it masquerades as purity. The whole world is mission country today — just like Northfield, Massachusetts, was for the first people who settled here. And Jesus is very clear that we are called to be missionaries in it. (Mr. da Silva, once again — what a wonderful, rousing reminder of that truth.)

As Our Lord said, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

Your patron, St. Thomas Aquinas, understood this, as you know. In fact, he echoes the commission of the Order of Preachers, writing that “even as it is better to illuminate than merely to shine, so is it better to give to others the fruits of one’s contemplation than merely to contemplate.”

Today, graduates, we need you to remember this when you walk out those doors. Our fallen world — mired in the twofold darkness of sin and ignorance — needs you to reject the illusion of the Ivory Tower and instead illuminate it with the light of Truth that this school has instilled in you.

Illuminate your homes. Most of you will be called to marriage and, God willing, to the gift of children. Few things will shine more brightly in the world than the home you build. As I have become fond of reminding friends in Washington and beyond, home life, truth, good joy start around the family dinner table. Honor it.

Illuminate your local parishes. Give generously of your time, and not just on Sunday. Play on the softball team. Mentor young couples. Work the Lenten fish fry. Build a community in your parish. Do as my wife reminds me when I’m trying to scurry home and violate all of the advice that I just gave you: “Go to Doughnut Sunday, Kevin.”

And when I complain to Mrs. Roberts that the coffee is too weak for a guy from the Gulf of America — see what I did there? You can applaud, that’s a pretty good name, “Gulf of America.” It’s not a partisan endorsement; Congress has taken this action. But back to me and Doughnut Sunday: Get out of our shells. Some of us, believe it or not, are natural introverts, but our parishes — as you know, your families are witnesses of this — are, of course, where we go to be fed and hopefully experience beautiful liturgies like we did today. But they’re also more than that. They’re communities for us to live out the Gospel Commission.

Illuminate your workplace. Here you have two missions. First, let the Holy Spirit shine through your work — be honest, be humble, and especially attentive to those at the bottom. Lift them up. Second, pursue excellence. Be the best at what you do, whatever you’re doing, whether you’re a teacher, lawyer, a plumber, or yes, as your tutors personify, even excellent professors.

Illuminate your country. Don’t take for granted the freedom America offers us. You know that our ancestors fought and died for it. And you know that it is up to us to keep it. “Make disciples of all nations,” Christ says, and as our great vice president reminds us, the ordo amoris compels us to start with this one.

Finally, illuminate your heart.

(No offense at Brazil. I’m drawing a really quick, on-the-fly deduction about da Silva and Brazil. Am I correct? Yes, OK. We’ll make Brazil second! I know there are Canadians in the audience; I won’t make the 51^st state joke. I won’t — I don’t believe in it! All kidding and ribbing aside, and thanks for letting me have a sense of humor; thank you for having a sense of humor. It actually is part of evangelizing the world. We’re Catholic, we believe in Catholic liberal education, and we’re not angry about it. We’re cheerful. You’re cheerful.)

Don’t mistake being right for being good. Christ’s love for us makes fighting for Him an adventure and a gift. Let us act like it. Celebrate each new dawn as another day that the Lord has made and another opportunity to serve the King of Kings.

And how can we best serve Him?

In Matthew 5, Christ declares, “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.” Today, as it has been many times before, Northfield is that city. This piece of land, where we sit, is that place. Thomas Aquinas College is that community, which means that you — you — are that light.

In the name of Christ and in the company of the saints, go forth and drive out the darkness.

God bless you!

 

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